


They Float

by FancifulRivers



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: AU, Did Pennywise really die?, Gen, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-03-12
Packaged: 2018-03-17 12:35:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3529637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FancifulRivers/pseuds/FancifulRivers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aubrey likes sewer systems. </p>
<p>Five years after the Losers destroy It, she explores the one under Derry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Float

Derry was different after the flood. 

There were the caved-in streets, the demolished houses and buildings and parking lots. They were repaired slowly and haphazardly. Many workers put their tools down at lunch and never returned.

There was the sewer system, which pumped dirty water into downtown for two days straight before some unlucky repairmen managed to put a stop to it.

It was more than that. There was a lightness in the air, as if the entire city had been covered in thick, greasy smog that the townsfolk had grown so used to, they couldn't notice until it was gone.

For Aubrey Gordon, only seven years old, it marked the beginning of her obsession with sewer systems. They were so complicated. Convoluted spirals of tunnels under the earth. Necessary for an urban sprawl. 

On the day of the storm, while she was playing in the back room (her mother keeping an extremely watchful eye on her as she folded towels, because she had a morbid fear of leaving her children alone, as all parents tended to do around Derry), she saw a blue balloon bob against the back door, squeaking against the glass before popping with a sudden rush of sound. Aubrey jumped, knocking her dolls over on the rug.

"What's wrong, honey?" Tisha Gordon rushed over, her heels clacking. Aubrey looked up. The balloon was gone. For a moment, she had been certain that pipes were emblazoned on the front, in a queer sort of Escher scrawl.

That was silly though. Balloons didn't have pictures like that. They had words, maybe, but not pictures.

Five hours later, they had to evacuate and stay with Tisha's mother in Bangor, and the balloon was driven completely out of Aubrey's head. It wasn't important, after all.

It was just a balloon.

* * *

 

When Aubrey was twelve years old, she found blueprints of the old Derry sewer system. Aubrey wasn't supposed to go into the adult side of the library very often, the research side, but Mike Hanlon was the librarian and he had a soft spot for her, the girl who could always be found with her nose in a book.

The blueprints were carefully spread out on a research table, weighted down by the little clear rock paperweights Mike liked to keep out in case students needed them. They were faded and crackly along the edges.

"What have you got there?" Mr. Hanlon asked in a cheerful voice. Aubrey jumped, reddening as she rolled the blueprints up in a tight, dusty roll.

"Nothing," she said, with a little laugh. "Just trying to get started on summer homework already."

"Summer just started," Mr. Hanlon chided playfully, his eyes crinkled up the way they always did. "Go out and play, young lady."

"Yes, sir," she tossed out, with an exaggerated salute. All the same, she carefully placed the rolled-up blueprints into her knapsack instead of putting them back on the table, watching Mr. Hanlon limp back to the check out desk.

_We were the Losers,_  echoed in her head, a voice that sounded almost exactly like the librarian's, and she startled again, looking around. But there was nobody there. Mike Hanlon was just pulling out his chair to sit down again. He hadn't said anything at all.

"Cracking up, Aubrey," she scolded herself in a low tone, pushing her glasses up her nose and grabbing her stack of library books to take home. They were mostly new ones.

_We float, Aubrey,_  crooned into her ear and this time, she practically ran out of the library, sneakers skidding on the slightly damp linoleum.

As he watched her go, Mike Hanlon found that all of his hair was standing straight up, and his leg twinged once, the pain as savage as when he had first injured it.

_The Turtle--_  the amorphous thought floated through his head, but he dismissed it as soon as it came.

"The Turtle couldn't help us," he whispered to himself, barely aware that he was speaking. "Aubrey..."

Then the moment passed, the phone blared at him, and he found himself explaining for the tenth time to Patricia Holnoke that yes, late fees meant you couldn't check any books out, no, he couldn't forgive them just this one time, he'd already tried to help her five times before.

The minutiae of the day helped, and by dinner time, all Mike could remember of the day was Aubrey's guilty expression when he'd startled her in front of the research table.

That, and the blueprints rolled up in her hand.


End file.
